I'm mired in deadlines and it has taken me weeks to get some of the last wins out in the mail, so I'm putting the Great Monday Give on hiatus, at least until after school starts. The next give will take place on Monday, August 29. In the mean time, I'll still be reviewing books and what not, so stick around!

Now that that's out of the way, the winner of last week's Give of The Sunflower Garden is Celina. Email me your mailing info to webe(at)soon(dot)com, and I'll get it out to you as soon as I can muddle my way through the heat to the post office. Happy Monday all!

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I'd put out the guest post request a while back when I went on vacation and then ended up with no internet, so now I have a backlog of books reviewed by readers. I thought rather than doing an update today, I'd share one with you. (And I know it seems of late that I'm stuck in the 70s, but fear not, I'll be back to the 60s next week!)

Welcome Amy Broadmoore, prolific book-lister of Delightful Children’s Books, clipped from her post 9 Books to Introduce Children to Jazz.


Ben's Trumpet
Rachel Isadora ~ Greenwillow Books, 1979

Author Rachel Isadora was a professional dancer studying with George Balanchine’s School of Ballet until an injury led her to begin writing and illustrating children’s books. Ben’s Trumpet was one of the first children’s books she wrote in the 1970s, and it's one of my favorites.

Ben’s Trumpet is the touching story of a boy who yearns to play the trumpet like the trumpeter he hears playing at the neighborhood Zig Zag Jazz Club. The text of Ben’s Trumpet is spare, and yet Isadora manages to tell a moving story and seamlessly introduce kids to the instruments in a jazz ensemble. An original jazz score was written to accompany Ben’s Trumpet, but the book stands alone without it.

Isadora received a Caldecott Honor for Ben’s Trumpet. While she generally creates colorful oil paintings, she used a very different black-and-white style here and in another of her early books, Max (about a boy who discovers ballet).

I love the slouchy figures Isadora drew for both Ben’s

Dr. Merlin's Magic Shop
Scott Corbett ~ Joe Mathieu ~ Little, Brown, 1973

I'm such a sucker for vintage children's books, that even a crummy-old-yellowing paperback won't turn me off... no matter how brittle and fragile the pages are. I did my best with these scans, but sometimes, the signs of age are just too difficult to Photoshop. That said, you all know I have a soft spot for Joe Mathieu because of his Sesame Street legacy. I had so many of his books when I was young, and even now I still enjoy his cartoonish style. Well, let me introduce you to my son's favorite Mathieu book, crummy and browning though it might be.... and a wee bit scary.

Nick loves magic tricks and fog. So when Nick looks out the window to find the foggiest day ever, he takes his dog, Bert, on a walk that leads them to...

All at once he stopped. He saw a shop he had never seen before.
The sign on it said: DR. MERLIN'S MAGIC SHOP.
"Hey, Bert!" he said "Here's a new shop, and it's a magic shop!
I'll bet Dr. Merlin sells all kinds of magic tricks! I'm going in!"
He walked to the door. But on the door were two small signs.
One said: CLOSED. The other said: MOVING.
"Darn it all, anyway!"

Nick then takes the back alley to see if anyone inside the shop can tell him where the mysterious store is moving to. Enter, Dr. Merlin, who--right from the start-- gives you the creeps when he asks Nick menacingly if he can use Bert for his "scrambled dogs" magic trick, wherein he would attempt to halve Bert with a poodle. When Nick protests in horror, the good doctor tries to poison him with you-will-obey-my-every-command gumdrops. Nick uses his smarts to trick the doctor and escape, but when he runs onto the street to find the store front and flag a cop, the shop evaporates as mysteriously as it appeared.

Koko's Kitten
Dr. Francine Patterson ~ photographs by Ronald H. Cohn
Scholastic, 1985

I'm out of pocket today, so I'll just post a few images from the book Koko's Kitten. Any child of the 70s and 80s knows the story of Koko, the orphaned gorilla child who was taught to speak sign language and communicate with humans.

All ethical questions aside, you have to admit Koko's communication skills have been hugely influential on the study of gorillas and the origins of humanity. No matter how you swing it, it's a profoundly life-altering concept to contemplate.

This is the sweet, but heartbreaking tale of Koko and her pet kitten, All Ball (Koko named it herself). The joy she feels upon receiving it as a gift and the grief when the animal is inadvertently run over by a car. If nothing else, this story illustrates how closely linked we as human beings are to these incredible creatures.

The book is still in print, and this month, Koko celebrated her 40th birthday.

Bless her heart.




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Shooting Stars
Ida Bohatta ~ translated by John Theobald
ars edition reprint published in 1981

Austrian author/illustrator Bohatta was famous for these sweet little books full of words and images about fairies, flowers, elves, gnomes, and in this case, wee babe shooting stars. Books with names like The Cloud Kitchen, The Busy Savers, The Hardworking Bee, The Misjudged Mushroom, and The Helpful Dwarves, she published over a hundred in her lifetime.

The Little Star
Out of a billion stars
here am I just this one,
Turning up my distant face
Like any other sun.
Quietly giving light
Is all the joy I know,
Sharing all my own delight
With everyone I know.

How do you spell A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E? I'm not sure when or in what format these books were originally published, so if anyone knows, speak up!



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Read along on Facebook, 3 Comments on Shooting Stars, last added: 7/26/2011